Shinhan Investment Securities has recommended that Korean investors replace the traditional 60% stock and 40% bond portfolio with a new model allocating 2% to digital assets and 8% to alternative assets. The recommendation was presented by senior researcher Park Woo-yeol during a press briefing at the Korea Exchange in Yeouido, Seoul, on Sept. 8.
Park argued that stocks and bonds have increasingly moved in the same direction, weakening the defensive benefit of the conventional 60/40 portfolio. After testing a 10% alternative allocation split between gold and bitcoin, Shinhan found that an 8% gold and 2% bitcoin mix produced relatively favorable risk-adjusted results. Under the recommended portfolio, investors would hold 60% stocks, 30% bonds, 8% gold and 2% bitcoin. The recommendation follows bitcoin's recovery past $80,000 in late August for the first time since mid-May.
The call comes as South Korea prepares broader digital asset rules, including crypto ETFs, stablecoin legislation, tokenized government bonds and the Digital Asset Basic Act. The Ministry of Economy and Finance has also announced plans to include digital assets under a new state asset management framework, while financial institutions remain restricted from direct crypto investment under a 2017 policy.
Park also highlighted growing competition between traditional finance and crypto platforms. Nasdaq is moving toward 23-hour weekday trading starting Dec. 6, 2026, and crypto exchanges are expanding into tokenized equities. Binance launched bStocks in June, and Kraken's xStocks has surpassed 500 tokenized assets and $37 billion in transaction volume. Hanwha Investment & Securities has built a tokenized securities platform on Avalanche and Hyperledger Besu ahead of legal changes scheduled for February 2027.
